Painful though it is for me to talk about it, ignoring your musician is an important pitfall to avoid. It may be that they are making inappropriate offers, but then dont all improvisers from time to time? In our latest podcast, find out what happens if you ignore your musician in musical improvised comedy...
Just a reminder, if you want to subscribe to our podcasts you can do it here If you want to find us on itunes, we are here.
0 Comments
We have many people coming to our workshops who claim that they "Cannot sing". When
asked to do scale warm ups, they claim that they have a very limited range and they find it hard to pitch a note. In my experience, people can find it hard to sing at the right pitch, but it is very rare to find someone who really does have a limited range. All you have to do is listen to them talking when they are animated, or hear them laugh. many people can laugh as high as a soprano's top note, up to two Gs above middle C. So there is something else restricting the voice, which is usually self-consciousness. They way to free up the voice is to be able to sing in an environment where nobody is judging you. I clearly remember at University having to play the violin in front of my class, and before my tutor who was viscious in his criticism of pitch and tone. As a result, I would sweat, clam up and fulfil his own prophesy. We need to perform in an atmosphere of joy and generousity. Criticism is of course vital to improve, but it can be given in a non-judgemental way. The cliche of criticism being given between praise might seem overused, but it still works. So when singing an improvised song, it is crucial that the self-critic is turned all the way down. What would we rather see, someone singing a perfectly rhyming funny verse with no commitment, or someone singing with joyful abandonment? Musical improv does encourage people to just go for it. There is no substitute for opening up, connecting with the audience and just giving it your best shot. There are often times in songs where it is hard to pitch the tune, or where the musician is going off to some daring key change and the singer feels left behind. It is at times like this that you need to summon the spirit of Rex Harrison. The leading role in Dr. Doolittle and My Fair Lady was renowned for "speak-singing". He could drift in and out of the melody effortlessly, and without compromising the integrity of the song. In fact, it adds to the pathos, the emotion, the Englishness of the piece. We often say that when a scene turns into a song, it is because you cannot contain your emotion any more. Well if you speak in the middle of a song it can be for the same reason...you cannot be constrained by the music any more, you musit just break out and say what you want to say. Do check out our latest podcast on the subject here, or subscribe to all of them so they just appear on your computer or phone. I mean, who wouldn't want Heather and Joe appearing randomly on their phone? (rhetorical) We are proud to announce the birth of our latest podcast - the final in our genres series about musicals and opera and anything else we could think of. Enjoy, and do let us know what you think.
We learn through playing.
Okay, we learn through other methods also like practise, repetition,experience and tutoring, but play is surely the most joyful and, more importantly, sub-conscious method of them all. Playing is a broader term for me than sitting down with a board game, or playing tag in the playground. As I watch my children who are now 5 and 7, I see them playing, arguing, making and breaking rules, cooperating and fighting, all within the boundaries of play. Very few of their conflicts or agreements will have any effect outside of the house, but they are all laying the foundations for future scenarios when they might need to make an intelligent choice of whether to aim for sympathy or obedience, strictness or compliance. So it is a poorer learning environment, wherever we might be, that does not contain an element of play. When I am teaching piano, I find it can give tremendous freedom to a student who is struggling with a piece, to let them improvise their own tune,or just play some blues for a while. It frees up the fingers, unblocks the creative mind, and lifts the energy in the room. All of these things are directly transferable to learning a piece of music, and can help with the attitude of “I cant play this” or “I hate this piece”, which mostly comes from a frustration of not being able to play it. I use an exercise for learning scales on the piano in which I make the student play just 3 notes up and down perfectly, then 4, then 5 and so on. If they make a mistake, they must go back to the previous number. I cheekily call this “the scale game”, although it more resembles torture. However, immediately the student will brighten up and see the exercise as a challenge and an achievement, rather than an exercise or just hard work, simply because I have called it a “game”. Playing also allows us to make mistakes in a safe environment. We learn so much faster from making our own mistakes than trying to learn from others’. Again, watching my children, I can tell them a hundred times not to touch a hot cup of tea, but it is only when they do it that they really learn the consequences. Perhaps I should have let them play more with hot water when they were young? Hmmmm. Role-play is commonplace in adult learning, and this is an important aspect of play. But for me, improvising is like role-play, but with joy and fun. It does not have to be funny, but it should be more free and experimental than your standard role-play scenario. Improvising can infiltrate any area of life, and so far I have not found anywhere it does not enrich. It has certainly livened up many a taxi ride for me! Let’s play, and play with joy, learn while we are not aware of learning. Then maybe we can grow without having to grow up. We have just returned from Nottingham where Heather and myself were putting MissImp, the local improv troupe, through their musical paces. MissImp are a well established performance troupe who like to welcome all abilities to their improv jam sessions, and perform monthly at the Glee Club in Nottingham. In the performance troupe there were a wide variety of experience, but they have not used much music in their shows.
It was interesting and rewarding working with an established troupe who are used to working together. It means that there was already a high level of trust and intuition between the improvisers that really came through when they were singing. We found that we could progress quickly into the more complex song structures and spend more time on presentation and technique with individuals. Suffice to say, there were some moments of utter hilarity, as well as moments that shall not leave that room! The first day culminated in one of our favourite exercises, the pointing song. It was to become the most memorable song of the weekend. The basic set up is that 6 or 7 improvisers arrange themselves in a group on stage facing forwards. They are then asked to sing a repeated short musical phrase whenever the conductor (Heather) points at them. After hearing all the different phrases, the conductor will combine different singers so that we hear some counterpoint and some interesting combined points of view. At the end, the singers are all singing their own lines simultaneously, but with the aim of converging onto one of the lines for the big finish. In this case the song was given the theme of money, and the final line that was blasted out in fine harmony was , "Give me what you owe, you bastard. Give me what you owe". On Sunday we went more into how to create a song from a scene, as well as some more short-form exercises that can be used in shows. The structure that most interested the troupe for their show was the ballad. This is a structure we use to great effect in The Maydays shows where we sing a love song for a couple in the audience. We finished Sunday with the charity song, a great favourite as it has it all. Verses, choruses, speaky bits, a rap, modulation, the works! After that, we had 2 hours with SIN, the Student improvisation class at Nottingham Uni. There were some students who had never done any improv of any sort, so it was a challenge. There were 20 students with widely different abilities, and most of them had no musical improv experience at all. As I looked around the circle at the start there was an enormous amount of fear and trepidation. We eased them slowly into the singing exercises before hitting them with a blues. There were some truly memorable performances, but the highlight once again was the pointing songs at the end. After the first one with 7 people, we said "OK another 7 please for the next pointing song". I have never seen so many people leap from their seats to get involved. The fear had turned to enthusiasm and the pointing song again proved itself the king of musical improv exercises. I cannot repeat half of the phrases that were sung during the "Families" pointing song which was the last group of the day, but there were many gasps of disbelief from the audience. All in all a wonderful weekend. Special thanks to Lloydie from MissImp for organising the weekend and for his amazing hospitality. Bring on the next one! In this podcast I chat to Liz Peters from The Maydays. She often fills in on piano for me, and is interested in how to play in a variety of styles. We talk about a few of those and the ways into certain genres. Also about musical improv in general.
Heather and Joe review some of the feedback in their latest podcast. Warning! May include some poor rapping.
Heather Urquhart and Joe Samuel discuss the use of Rock and Pop music in musical improv comedy.
Heather Urquhart and Joe Samuel don't always get it right. Here are some of our favourite Outtakes.
|
AuthorHeather Urquhart and Joe Samuel have over 15 years experience performing, teaching and writing about Musical Improv. Based in the UK they have facilitated workshops and graced stages around the world. Archives
November 2022
Categories
All
|